Name: Nintendo DS Browser
Genre: Internet Browser
Platform: Nintendo DS 

There are several features that the Nintendo DS has that took a while to grow into maturity. Some of its pre-pubescent functions (aka, gimmicks) like blowing into the microphone as a game tool faded after the first few generations of games. One thing that took a while to start being used fully was the internet capability. Some games hid away their multiplayer as multi-cart play instead of taking the extra time to make it an online capable game.

Then, slowly, they trickled out. It worked fantastic and with the exception of the DS friend codes it worked fine.

Now, several years after the two screened beauty was released, we can use it to access the internet just like a laptop. The back of the box shows a perfectly formatted screen showing the webpage for the Opera Browser; something you will never see anywhere else.

The browser is ridiculously slow compared to the average high speed internet. This doesn’t make any sense because it is using high speed internet to connect. Web pages took minutes to load and once they did were so jumbled up due to the low screen resolution that they were impossible to navigate.

The first webpage I went to (after Gamervision, of course) was Youtube. If the DS could be used as a portable movie viewer I was sold and would instantly suggest this to everyone in the world. You would see me, with a glowing DS Lite in hand, standing on the top of a mountain yelling "I LOVE THIS SYSTEM!"

But instead, after searching for a certain Kenny Mii Video, I was greeted with a wonderful message. Apparently the Opera DS browser does not have the ability to view it. Right there, dead in the water, the browser sits.

Just in case anyone still wants to know after hearing about the piss poor resolution, the lack of video support, and excessive loading times, the handwriting recognition for it works fairly well. A speck of gold in a pile of crap, but it gets the job done.

This isn’t a game, but it is still something that can be bought, rented, or trashed. I say trash and if you really want to use the internet on the go – save up for a laptop.